


put a blue ribbon on my brain

by ratherembarrassing



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Pheromones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:09:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7789639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherembarrassing/pseuds/ratherembarrassing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't the first time Chloe has called her in a panic, but a month into the job— and two months after Kara's promotion, though that first month is best forgotten, along with the parade of replacements that never took— she's down to only the more significant disasters that tend to swirl to life around Cat Grant.</p><p>Before Kara can ask Chloe what's the matter now, she continues in a rush. "Cat's in the hospital—"</p><p>Kara nearly falls out of the sky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put a blue ribbon on my brain

**Author's Note:**

> written for the sin bin bad tropes fic challenge.
> 
> (it turns out you have to jump through a lot of hoops to give characters informed consent!)

"Because, Jeremy, if you don't include the possessive— Just replace the verb with 'explode'. Did Tommy explode?"

Kara waits while Jeremy struggles to understand the English language, tapping out a quick email to Cat's new assistant as she listens to him mutter through the correction in his master document.

Of all the things she's learnt since arriving on Earth, Kara never expected the English lessons she received at age 13 and barely able to speak the language to be so useful in her new job. She makes a mental note to thank Eliza for making her sit and learn things like the difference between a gerund and a present participle, if only because now she can show up Jeremy, the smug douche of a beat reporter who assumes because she's only just joined The Trib's editing team that she's never edited a thing in her life.

She used to proof Cat's emails, for crying out loud. Does he  _ really _ think she survived by being an idiot?

"Okay, thanks," she says when he stops his grumbling. "Send me through the final when you're done. Bye."

Ugh. She loves her new job, but people used to just do what she wanted when she worked for Cat, and that was a heck of a lot easier than having to cajole jerks into doing so like she does now. It's the worst part about this whole promotion thing.

An email alert pops up on her screen, and she remembers that's not actually the worst part of this whole promotion thing.

_ Hi Kara _

_ Ms Grant has to reschedule lunch. She didn't give me a time, but she has next Monday and Thursday still open. Let me know! _

_ Thanks _

_ Chloe _

Cat cancelling their lunch on her for the second time in a week? That is the worst part of this whole promotion thing.

…

The new job does have  _ some _ benefits; for one, she gets to leave on time most days.

The first day Kara stepped out of the office before 6pm, daylight in the sky and people hurrying about on the streets, she had no idea what to do with herself. The last year had been… a lot, and free time was thin on the ground, and the sudden freedom had sent her into the sky.

It had felt like those first days when she'd started being Supergirl, like all the possibility was back again, instead of gobbled up in constantly fighting the trouble she'd attracted to National CIty in the first place.

Now she's a regular fixture on the 10 o'clock news with her evening patrols, something she'd only had sporadic time for between work crises and alien bad guy crises. It's nice, darting around the city, making her presence known in crowded Downtown, or out at the Pier. She's dropped into some rooftop parties, and the reaction she gets cracks her up every time. The people on National City are awesome. They actually really like Supergirl, and if she's not punching aliens or stopping buildings from falling on someone's head, they just want to say hi. 

Sometimes they even want to buy her a beer.

She doesn't even  _ like _ beer, but it's the thought that counts. Kara's not easily going to forget that people were so quick to turn on her, but maybe if they get to know  _ her _ , next time… As she swoops over the mansions in the hills, she shudders. There won't be a next time.

Alex hates how much footage of Supergirl is out there now. She'd yelled at Kara for posing for selfies, which Kara thinks was really unfair, because it's not like she's even got her own Instagram account. And she doesn't care how much Alex yells about it. For once in her life she's having actual fun, and not some cotton wrapped version of it designed to make her life seem normal.

And, she gets to fly.

It's good. It's  _ better _ than how it had been, with the constant hiding and lying she'd been doing with Cat. Not that she's managed to pluck up the courage to actually tell Cat yet, but she's going to. She is.

It's not like she gets all that much of her time anymore.

With a sigh eaten up by the wind, she veers west and heads for the ocean, and as she crosses the sandy beach below, her phone buzzes against her ankle, and she taps at her ear to answer the call.

"Kara, you need to come," a voice hisses through Kara's earpiece, startling her to attention.

This isn't the first time Chloe has called her in a panic, but a month into the job— and two months after Kara's promotion, though that first month is best forgotten, along with the parade of replacements that never took— she's down to only the more significant disasters that tend to swirl to life around Cat Grant.

Before Kara can ask Chloe what's the matter now, she continues in a rush. "Cat's in the hospital—"

Kara nearly falls out of the sky.

…

The doctors don't know what's wrong, only that — and this comes as something of a shock to Kara, who still has Cat's entire life memorized inside out and upside down and she had  _ no idea _ that — it's been going on for a while. Weeks, in fact.

Weeks of random dizzy spells that come and go, of Cat's appetite going from nonexistent to voracious, of her heart rate jumping all over the place for no reason as she went about her day.

How on Earth had Kara not noticed? She's no longer at Cat's door, but she…

All it takes is a second to find Cat's voice in the noise, or if she's in a rare moment of silence, Kara's become pretty good at picking out heartbeats if she knows where the person is. She… it's calming, to know Cat's there sometimes, especially now that they don't see each other as often as Kara wished they did.

From her place in the corner of the crowded waiting room, Kara glares at Chloe, and wonders what else she's been keeping from her. For a girl who panics at a request to pick up more than three things in an afternoon, she sure has a funny idea about what is and is not an emergency, because Cat visiting her doctor more than once in, oh, ever? Is a pretty big fu—

"Okay," someone interrupts Kara's rising panic, and she directs her glare away from useless Chloe to the woman in a lab coat who is now speaking to her. "Ms. Chambers, we're going to be keeping Cat here for at least tonight. You probably don't need to stay any longer, but she needs someone—"

"Overnight?" Kara says, a little too loudly in a room filled with low murmured voices, and leaves her corner to join the conversation she probably shouldn't have been able to hear. "Is Cat okay?"

"I'm sorry," the doctor interrupts with a patient grimace, "and you are?"

"Kara. Kara Danvers." She sticks out her hand and the doctor lets Kara pump her hand for a moment. "I was Ms Grant's assistant before her," she continues with a nod in Chloe's direction, still clutching at the doctor's hand. "For two years, so I know she's probably been giving you a he—heck of a time."

"Yes, well." The doctor disengages Kara's grip on her hand with some difficulty, flipping open her clipboard dismissively. "I'm afraid I can't discuss Ms Grant's condition with you without her consent."

Which Cat would never give.

(And she tries really,  _ really _ hard to believe that Cat never would have, ever, but Kara remembers Adam, remembers Leslie, remembers Carter, and all the million little pieces of herself that Cat has given Kara in the two years she worked half a step behind her. And she also remembers their cancelled lunch today, the second in a week, and the meetings and lunches before it, and the less and less time Cat seems to have for her and—)

"You don't have to tell me anything," Kara says, some unknown fear itching at the back of her throat. She swallow desperately against it, to sound sure of herself and her right to see Cat, because people don't just do what she says. But they do Supergirl. "You just have to let me see her."

"Yes!" Chloe says before Kara can continue, nodding enthusiastically at Kara's suggestion, and Kara can't control the way her face is probably showing her surprise at her unexpected co-conspirator. "Kara is who you should be talking to. Cat loves her, she'd  _ much _ rather have Kara, a--and Kara! She loves Cat—" Chloe whips around in Kara's direction. "You love Cat! You'll take care of everything, right?"

What?

"I— Well, I— Of course I'll—" She takes a breath to get herself together, because  _ what _ , but now is not the time to deal with  _ that _ piece of information, or whatever has given Chloe that idea. Cat's back there,  _ in the hospital _ , and Kara's not going dissolve into a useless puddle when Cat might need her. Not when the alternative is leaving her to useless Chloe, even if she is currently throwing Kara under a bus. "Take me to see her."

Kara can handle a bus.

…

"Ms Grant?"

"I thought we discussed that," Cat says, shifting painfully in the bed to face Kara where she's loitering in the doorway, and when she finally does Kara can't bite back the gasp of shock.

She might be able to handle a bus, but Cat…

Cat looks awful, which Kara wasn't sure Cat was capable of. She's never even seen Cat in so much as a pair of jeans, and the sight of her with her face scrubbed of makeup and hair tied back in a messy little knot is more worrying than the non-answers the doctor had provided as she showed Kara to Cat's room.

Cat looks exhausted, and weak, which isn't a word Kara would ever associate with Cat Grant.

Seriously,  _ how _ had she not seen this?

She tries to remember the last time she saw Cat, dismayed when she realizes she can't remember what day it was, only that it was the previous week. The editors' weekly meeting? She didn't even speak to Cat then, just sat with the other juniors at the back of the room. Before that… they'd had lunch! Despite the cancelled lunches this week, they actually have a standing appointment for whenever Cat can fit her in once a week. Cat had seemed fine then.

Hadn't she?

She racks her brain trying to remember, but all she can recall is the white of Cat's skirt, the smell of her new perfume, and the way she'd described telling Oprah off for her terrible Instagram photos.

Kara loves Oprah's Instagram.

"Sorry," she finally whispers, remembering one of their lunches that didn't get cancelled, where Cat had declared herself sick of Kara referring to her like she was her school teacher and not a colleage.  _ Sick _ , she thinks, the memory of Cat's teasing falling to ruin as she shuffles further into the room.

"How a— are you?" she asks, itching to reach out and wipe away the dark smudges beneath Cat's eyes. "I mean— that's a stupid question, you're in the hospital," she berates herself, before she attempts to rally with a forced smile. "That's why I'm here. Chloe, she— she called me."

"Well, Clara is an idiot," Cat offers, her usual spark lasting only moment before she sinks back into the pillows with an exhausted sigh. She glares at the ceiling for a moment, as if the halogen lights had personally insulted her. "Honestly, I would have fired her before now if I wasn't so…."

Cat leaves that sentence unfinished, scrubbing a hand across her face before pressing her fingers against her eyes, her hospital gown crinkling noisily, and Kara can't keep herself back anymore, crossing the room to stand beside Cat's bed.

"I'm fine," Cat finally says, hand flicking dismissively even as she looks right past Kara. "Everybody is just overreacting, which normally I would appreciate, but a hospital is going way too far."

"I don't think they… the hospital…" Kara trails off, recognizing Cat's words for what they really are. "Don't worry about Chloe," she says, wrapping her fingers around the hospital bed's rails to stop herself from doing something inappropriate like touching Cat at all, when what she wants to do is wrap her up in a hug and fly her away. "I'll take care of everything."

At that, Cat finally blinks up at her, as if only just realizing Kara's actually there. "Just like old times."

And oh, how Kara wishes, losing herself in Cat's attention for a moment. 

Because yes, Cat makes time for her, but… Things have been so odd between them lately. Not since Kara's promotion; everything was  _ wonderful _ after that. Cat had spent every day with her, crafting a new job for Kara once they had decided nothing that already existed would be exactly the right fit. They'd worked together to find something  _ right _ , and then once Kara started, Cat had invited her to lunch to report back if it was working, then how she was doing, then just because. But then… 

Then Cat got sick,  _ obviously _ .

She's so stupid. She'd thought Cat was— something. It was stupid, she sees that now. Cat's been  _ sick _ . Cat's been sick and Kara's been silently moping about getting a tiny bit less of her limited time, because  _ Cat's been sick _ .

But there's no time for that now. (There's no time for that ever, really. If she lets herself think about her moping then she'll have to think about why she was moping and—)

"Exactly like old times," Kara replies, and finally gives in and lets herself press her hand against Cat's for a moment, the skin beneath her fingertips cool and dry, but Cat's mouth curves into something slightly less tense, if not exactly a smile. "I'll bring your things from home, and I'll get in contact with Michael—"

  
"Don't…" Whatever Cat was going to say is lost as her eyes flutter closed and every machine in the room starts beeping with alarm. Beneath her hand on Cat's arm, the skin has turned blotchy and red hot to Kara's touch, and she tries not to panic as she rips her hand away and starts screaming for a doctor.


End file.
